Questions About Using a Single Email for Everything

[thisdude]

So just like the title says, is it alright to use a single email address for everything even if it's your real name in it? BUT you have unique passwords for all your accounts, using a password manager so you're maxing out the character lengths, changing passwords regularly for accounts you deems important (financial, personal etc) and using 2FA (software token or sms if that's the only option). And are careful to not be a dumb human and click "shiny" emails that look legit?

 

What do you think? I'm sure my spam emails would increase but that's pretty easy to mitigate now a days. I'm just getting tired of having so many email addresses to manage. Especially for an entire family. What are your thoughts and recommendations? Thanks.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

You can always use ThunderBird... To have all your emails in one place...

[thisdude]

2 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said:

You can always use ThunderBird... To have all your emails in one place...

I've used Thunderbird, Outlook, Windows 10 Mail. I'm just frustrated and tired of managing different email accounts...what for is my question?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

12 minutes ago, thisdude said:

I've used Thunderbird, Outlook, Windows 10 Mail. I'm just frustrated and tired of managing different email accounts...what for is my question?

Oh, OK. You never mentioned that.

 

I'm out of ideas then...

[Gotenks98]

I don't advise merging them together due to the spam. I have a throw away address just for that stuff to dump into. If you just have to then how about setting up forwarding for all the various accounts you get so you only have to deal with one address?

[thisdude]

20 hours ago, Gotenks98 said:

I don't advise merging them together due to the spam. I have a throw away address just for that stuff to dump into. If you just have to then how about setting up forwarding for all the various accounts you get so you only have to deal with one address?

Yeah but that's what the Spam folder is for no? And I think most of the mainstream email services are pretty good at catching spam today. 

[shockz]

I've only used one address for years, and any spam I actually do get is directed to the spam folder automatically. The problem I run into is the constant slew of news letters and coupons from legit business I gave that email too, usually though a quick unsubscribe click solves that problem. I also use Outlook for its focused inbox feature.

 

Managing multiple email address takes just as much as it does to manage a single email address.

 

 

[+BudMan MVC]

For personal email I have just used a gmail for quite some time.. If gmail decided to just blow away all the email - there would be a lot of F'd people

 

I do own a domain that I have used for recovery email, etc.  But I do not use this for any sort of normal email.. But since I own the domain, I can always control where email for domain goes and can point that anywhere I need too, etc.  No matter what..

 

But I have gotten lazy over the years and when I sign up for something I just use my gmail. I do use +something addresses that gmail supports for websites - this can help in finding where spam comes from when they use [email protected] as the address.

 

If your serious about just wanting to use single email address you might want to look to owning your own domain.. You can then create any [email protected] you want and send it to where you want.. And as long as you own the domain you can control where email goes.. So no company could just close up shop and cause you pain because your email no longer works.

 

 

[The Rev]

Something to keep in mind...  If you are looking to cut down on spam in general, you can always use timebombed email services like 10minutemail.com and the like when u sign up for one-time stuff but don't want to deal with the hassle of spam.  🙂

[thisdude]

On 6/29/2019 at 8:44 AM, shockz said:

I've only used one address for years, and any spam I actually do get is directed to the spam folder automatically. The problem I run into is the constant slew of news letters and coupons from legit business I gave that email too, usually though a quick unsubscribe click solves that problem. I also use Outlook for its focused inbox feature.

 

Managing multiple email address takes just as much as it does to manage a single email address.

 

 

Yeah that's kind of what I'm imagining would happen with just using a single email. So what if spammers get a hold of it. Spam filters are very good today compared to 5, 10 years ago.

[thisdude]

20 hours ago, BudMan said:

For personal email I have just used a gmail for quite some time.. If gmail decided to just blow away all the email - there would be a lot of F'd people

 

I do own a domain that I have used for recovery email, etc.  But I do not use this for any sort of normal email.. But since I own the domain, I can always control where email for domain goes and can point that anywhere I need too, etc.  No matter what..

 

But I have gotten lazy over the years and when I sign up for something I just use my gmail. I do use +something addresses that gmail supports for websites - this can help in finding where spam comes from when they use [email protected] as the address.

 

If your serious about just wanting to use single email address you might want to look to owning your own domain.. You can then create any [email protected] you want and send it to where you want.. And as long as you own the domain you can control where email goes.. So no company could just close up shop and cause you pain because your email no longer works.

 

 

I'm not really concerned about any of the majors closing up shop. But if they did I'm sure I'd have plenty of time to transfer emails and switch to another provider. Even when Yahoo email got bought out everyone had plenty of notice to switch and yet Yahoo email is still running. 

 

My biggest concern is just simplifying down to one email to relieve my stress and just wasted time managing multiple email accounts.

 

I've thought about having my own domain to have my own email addresses. However, that would again be another thing to maintain and pay for. I like the idea but don't want to spend time managing it.

20 hours ago, The Rev said:

Something to keep in mind...  If you are looking to cut down on spam in general, you can always use timebombed email services like 10minutemail.com and the like when u sign up for one-time stuff but don't want to deal with the hassle of spam.  🙂

I've used 10minutemail before, very helpful indeed! Great for one off sign ups.

[sc302 Veteran]

IMO, you should have 2 emails.  One for sign ups and just utter crap where you don't want to receive advertisements, understand that rules have been a thing since the inception of email...if you choose to find that out or not was on your own accord.  Some people have 3 or 4 emails, keeping personal emails personal not intermingling them.  

 

While it may be tiresome to maintain accounts, only 2 or 3 should be constant....the advert one should only be when you sign up for garbage.

[thisdude]

1 minute ago, sc302 said:

IMO, you should have 2 emails.  One for sign ups and just utter crap where you don't want to receive advertisements, understand that rules have been a thing since the inception of email...if you choose to find that out or not was on your own accord.  Some people have 3 or 4 emails, keeping personal emails personal not intermingling them.  

 

While it may be tiresome to maintain accounts, only 2 or 3 should be constant....the advert one should only be when you sign up for garbage.

I get that and that's been a mainstay for a long time now. But is it really necessary now with how great spam filters how. Outlook has that great focused feature to help put important emails upfront. Gmail has several tabs to funnel email into.  And I'm starting to think so what if ad companies have my "batman" email? All they are going to do is sell it to other companies that will send more spam that will go directly into my spam folder. Am I being naive?

[sc302 Veteran]

Just now, thisdude said:

I get that and that's been a mainstay for a long time now. But is it really necessary now with how great spam filters how. Outlook has that great focused feature to help put important emails upfront. Gmail has several tabs to funnel email into.  And I'm starting to think so what if ad companies have my "batman" email? All they are going to do is sell it to other companies that will send more spam that will go directly into my spam folder. Am I being naive?

spam filters aren't that great.  

[thisdude]

3 minutes ago, sc302 said:

spam filters aren't that great.  

Are they bad enough to have to sign up for a separate email address that requires you to maintain? I'm not so sure unless it's some shady site you don't want sending email to your single email address. I mean marketing emails from Kohls, GameStop etc aren't so bad and spam filters can easily be trained to always remember to move them to spam right?

[sc302 Veteran]

those are the easy ones.....

 

it is your email and how you wish to go about treating it.  I know a bit about it, I deal with it every day.  They are far from perfect and capturing the bad stuff properly.  Kohl's, etc and legitimate emails are easy....they are legitimate and will essentially come from only a hand full of sources....they might be annoying, but they are far from the spam that I think of.  What I think of, and am exposed to, is a bit more malicious.

 

Here is a sample of what my users get daily from what seems (to the untrained eye) to be the CEO

Quote

 

Are you available? I am in a meeting and I need to send some gift cards to a client today. I need you to go to any store nearby to get some Google Play gift cards for me. Can you handle this?

 

Thanks. 

 

No spam rules or filters are grabbing that no matter how many times I report this type of email.  I ended up creating a mail server rule to block the message if the Name in the email is the CEO's...his name is kind of unique so it is possible for me to do that....but if it were John Smith, it would be much harder.

[thisdude]

On 6/29/2019 at 8:44 AM, shockz said:

I've only used one address for years, and any spam I actually do get is directed to the spam folder automatically. The problem I run into is the constant slew of news letters and coupons from legit business I gave that email too, usually though a quick unsubscribe click solves that problem. I also use Outlook for its focused inbox feature.

 

Managing multiple email address takes just as much as it does to manage a single email address.

 

 

Yeah Outlook has come a long way. And that focused tab is very nice. 

 

Yeah if you’ve had an email since the AOL days there’s no way you can’t have been on some DB leaks or spam list by now. 

[thisdude]

14 minutes ago, sc302 said:

those are the easy ones.....

 

it is your email and how you wish to go about treating it.  I know a bit about it, I deal with it every day.  They are far from perfect and capturing the bad stuff properly.  Kohl's, etc and legitimate emails are easy....they are legitimate and will essentially come from only a hand full of sources....they might be annoying, but they are far from the spam that I think of.  What I think of, and am exposed to, is a bit more malicious.

 

Here is a sample of what my users get daily from what seems (to the untrained eye) to be the CEO

No spam rules or filters are grabbing that no matter how many times I report this type of email.  I ended up creating a mail server rule to block the message if the Name in the email is the CEO's...his name is kind of unique so it is possible for me to do that....but if it were John Smith, it would be much harder.

Yeah these basic phishing emails can work really well on the less tech savvy for sure! I work for a big company that has a pretty great on going spam campaign and it'll send out similar ones that are relevant to the work and culture of our company and they regular hook people. 

 

I've got an old school Gmail account, more than one, back when they were only sending invites only. So I regularly get warnings about my account having a password reset, or some clever phishing emails that I'm sure are designed to get access to them. So I totally understand this. But this does happen to everyone no matter what email strategy they use I think. It takes very low effort to mass spam, phish and spear phish people now a days. 

 

But again I'm burnt out on managing multiple email addresses, across different services, switching them around and creating new ones...ugh! I'm thinking that just using a single email for everything, using a password manager with maxed out character length password, 2FA enabled where you can and that's it. Besides exposing myself to more spam/phishing/DB leaks (DB leaks are unavoidable and inevitable I think) do you see any issues with my thinking? 

[sc302 Veteran]

again it is your email and how you wish to go about it...

 

it takes no additional thought or pains to manage my gmail, outlook, yahoo, etc mail.  most of which I rarely go into.

[shockz]

Spam filters are fine. I haven’t gotten a spam email in my inbox for quite a long time now. 

[SnoopZ]

I wouldn't  want to take the risk of only using 1 email for everything especially when important  things like banking are involved, also don't  forget sites often ask for a different email account for account recovery, its pretty silly to only use 1 in my opinion.

 

There is no maintaining time for more than 1 email account if you collect your email from the same place.

 

 

[thisdude]

18 hours ago, SnoopZ said:

I wouldn't  want to take the risk of only using 1 email for everything especially when important  things like banking are involved, also don't  forget sites often ask for a different email account for account recovery, its pretty silly to only use 1 in my opinion.

 

There is no maintaining time for more than 1 email account if you collect your email from the same place.

 

 

How would it be risky using the same email for everything even banking? I mean if the password was weak and not regularly changed, 2FA isn’t enabled yeah I can see that. I’m just curious because I want to see the holes in my thinking here. Again I’m not really concerned about spam or my email ending up on a DB leak because that’s unavoidable (simplest and least harmful is a family member or friend having your contact info and them sending you email, calling, or having an app installed that grabs it) in today’s age. Especially the DB hack/leaks.  Thanks

[SnoopZ]

In my opinion I wouldn't just have 1 email, as already pointed out there is no more time/hassle managing more than 1, just use an email app.

 

But I think you have made your mind up what you want to do and nothing we say will change your mind.

[thisdude]

On 7/2/2019 at 1:57 PM, SnoopZ said:

In my opinion I wouldn't just have 1 email, as already pointed out there is no more time/hassle managing more than 1, just use an email app.

 

But I think you have made your mind up what you want to do and nothing we say will change your mind.

I just haven't heard any great arguments other than spam as a reason to have more than one email address.

 

No I haven't totally made up my mind. I'm just not so sure that the old strategy of having more than one email is really needed anymore.

[SnoopZ]

Maybe you need to start a poll, but in my opinion you need more than 1, often accounts require another email just for recovery, and as it is no more effort then why not have atleast 2?